The Letter A
by EnglandBabe1997
Summary: Alice in Wonderland Alphabet drabbles xx
1. Alice

Alice has been brought up knowing that one day she will marry a Lord and be a mother, and that will be her life's purpose. Her mother is strict when she needs to be but her father encourages her, even whilst her mother stands next to him and tell her that cats cannot smile and flowers have never talked.

Her father calls her mad, barmy.

She quite likes being mad. There is an odd kind of logic to it, only understood by those equally mad.

It's because of that she never really fits in. No one sees the world the way she does, they're all parties and engagements and stockings.

Then she finds herself in Underland and suddenly, she has people who understand her in a way she's not felt since her father died.

(It's why she thinks it's a dream at first. She's never felt this well connected to anyone in her life.)


	2. Bandersnatch

"I want one!" Iracebeth pouted.

Stayne replied, "I'm not quite sure where to get one from."

"I don't care. I want one!"

"Your Majesty..."

"I want one!" She shouted in the tone of voice that threatened someone's immediate decapitation. Stayne, hoping to avoid his own attempted to placate her.

"I'm sure they'll be one somewhere."

"Good. I want it by the end of this week."

Stayne choked. "I'm not quite sure that we'll be able to manage that."

"By the end of this week," she repeated in a voice that reminded Stayne she knew exactly how dangerous she was, enormous head and all.

And that was how Underland acquired a Bandersnatch.


	3. Chess

"That's not fair Chess!" Alice pouted as Chessur moved another piece.

"It's perfectly fair Alice."

"You're not allowed to do that in Upland!"

"But you can to it in Underland. And right now we're in Underland. You should've asked about the rules before."

Alice pouted yet again as she moved another piece.

Chessur whistled, impressed. "Where did you learn that?"

"From Tarrant."

"So how come you learnt that but not this?"

"I was playing against him. He wasn't going to teach me how to beat him, was he?"

"It's the Hatter. Most people can't predict what he is liable to do. In fact, I wager Alice, you are more likely the only one capable of that fact."

Alice laughed once more before turning back to the game of chess.


	4. Dormice

Mally isn't what one would usually expect of a dormouse. Perhaps that is the point – she is in Underland after all. What else could she expect? In fact, by now, she has learnt not to expect anything in Underland, and so sword wielding dormice should not be a great surprise.

But she can't help it. In Upland no animals can talk, and if she were given the chance to guess at how the dormice might speak (were she not laughed at for considering the idea) is sweetly or maybe even slyly, as when they evade a trap set out for them.

Mally, however is neither sweet nor sly. She is bold and loud and never hesitates to tell you exactly what is on her mind, perhaps with a great deal more attitude than Alice would expect. Mally is always willing to tell you when she thinks you are wrong (and she thinks that of Alice more often than not). She is a brave and courageous friend, loyal to a fault. When angered, it would take a very stupid person to goad Mally into a temper (perhaps Alice is a very stupid person).

Alice finds that she is quite glad she is wrong about dormice.


	5. Elegance

When one is brought up in a life of leisure and luxury they gain a kind of elegance and poise – the kind Alice's mother had always tried to force her in to.

She'd never quite managed to achieve it – she'd taken after her father and was far too gangly to achieve the society accepted mannerisms.

Underland freed her of all that society's rules and constraints.

Everything _there_ was spirited and free and utterly unconstrained.

It took her a while to find the elegance that was all around her, in the White Queen's healing and Tarrant and his hatting. Alice rather preferred this kind of elegance. She didn't need to wear a corset here.


	6. Frabjous Day

Many days were on the Oraculum. Some of them were better than others - Mirana quite enjoyed most of them. She was as fair as a Queen as she could be. Until her sister had decided to take control.

The days after that weren't so good.

It wasn't until the Oraculum starting showing Frabjous Day she started to hope again. Maybe when that happened none of her subjects would ever be beheaded ever again.

When Alice came back - and Mirana knew that she would come back - she would have a lot of very desperate people pinning a lot of their hopes on her.


	7. Gigantic

"What did you think you were doing?" Tarrant asked gleefully.

Mally pouted. "It _isn't_ my fault."

"Who's is it then?"

"Mirana's."

"Do you really think that Mirana would do this?"

"Was it Thackery then?"

"Thackery wasn't anywhere near."

Mally thought. With dawning comprehension she yelled, "Then who...? Hatter!"

She leapt forwards and grabbed him, taking the bottle from his hand.

"Careful Mally. You're causing an earthquake!"

"You wanted be to be this tall. Deal with it. You are so lucky my sword didn't change with me."

Tarrant gulped before grinning sheepishly up at her. "At least you know what it's like to be big now."

"I never wanted to be _this_ big!"


	8. Horvendush Day

The sun shines down on Underland as the people sing and dance and cheer. Mirana cannot stop smiling - at her people, at her hatter, even at her horse. She is too happy for words and the weather is reflecting that. Tarrant laughs at her giddy joy and at the stumbling and clumsy dancing of his cousin with a young village girl.  
Later on they must go back to the palace and be boring people - as Tarrant likes to calls them. Mirana calls them politicians.  
Maybe something will happen that means she can prolong staying out here - away from the politicians, whom she cannot throw something at due to her vows not to harm another living thing.  
Almost in disagreement with that thought there is a high pitched scream. Everyone freezes.  
There is a blast of fire shot from overhead and people disintegrate where they stand. The mass hysteria starts.  
Someone is harming her people, Mirana thinks. They will pay.  
The sun has gone back in.


	9. Infectious

Insanity was sanity in Underland. If you were sane then, by Underland's standards, you were both insane and abnormal.

Visitors to Underland did not often stay with the people. Those that did often found themselves either running from the kingdom screaming, or found themselves a seat set for them at the Mad Hatter's tea party.

In Underland insanity was catching.

In Underland, if you weren't insane, then you better be good at faking it or they would simply talk to you until you were driven mad.

It happened to all of them in the end. They were all a bit twisted (some more so than others) - Tarrant, Thackery, Mally, Mirana. Even Alice in the end.

Insanity was infectious.


	10. Jabberwocky

'Beware the Jabberwocky' they cried,

With hands wringing wildly and tears in their eyes.

It's teeth snap in its powerful jaws

Its fearsome tail, its savage claws.

It reigned in terror under the Red Queen,

The most fearsome beast to have ever been seen

Undefeated, it roamed far and wide,

Scouring the kingdom 'til there was nowhere to hide.

Red Queen almighty, she lured it into a cage,

Until its bloodthirsty fear simmered to bloodthirsty rage.

Angry and wild, it lay there for years,

But Underland's people never forgot their fears.

On Frabjous Day the beast was released

In the White Queen Mirana's desperate hope for peace.

And on the chessboard outside the old ruined palace.

The Jabberwocky was slain by the Queen's Champion Alice.

**This came to my whilst I was in chemistry - I was going to do a proper drabble, but the actual poem popped into my head and next thing I knew I was rhyming xx Please read and review!**


	11. Knave of Hearts

**I decided to take a different spin on this - but I'm not quite sure where it came from xx**

Slavery had sometimes been present in Underland - by other names and by necessity, but present.

As a child he'd been sold to the King and Queen as the youngest of twelve, his parents unable to support their family. They had all needed the money.

When they were children he'd played with Iracebeth, Mirana and the other castle children. He'd been closest to Iracebeth as they were closest in age even if they hadn't always gotten on. She'd liked to hit him with her dolls. The only toy he'd ever been consistently allowed to use was the knight and horse. Eventually she got bored with her King and Queen dolls and took the Knight off him.

He never really forgave her for that.


	12. Lowell

When it had been announced to him by his very excited father that he would marry the sensible Kingsleigh girl, his first thought was relief he wasn't being forced to marry the wild younger one.

Then he considered Margaret – young, sensible, pretty. She had been trained as a proper wife. She would be one to have children and sit in the parlour drinking tea with people she secretly hated. She was proper.

He needed a wife, an heir.

But he knew he would always be going behind her back to get what he _needed_, all the things that weren't proper.


	13. Margaret

Margaret Kingsleigh was not an imbecile. Kingsleigh's were many things (many of which her sister was in spades), but idiocy was not encouraged in any kind of Kingsleigh, no matter whether madness and improper behaviour was.

She knew what Lowell got up to behind her back but she'd been trained to pretend she couldn't see it. Most women were good at being selectively blind, and as long as he didn't disgrace her or her family's name, she couldn't care less about what he did.

It wasn't like she loved him. She was good at pretending. They all were. (Everyone except Alice.)


	14. Nivens

People were _always_ late. Alice had always been (at first he'd thought it was all Uplanders that were ignorant of Time, but then he'd seen her turn up late to her own party whereas everyone else turned up on time) and it seemed the rest of the Underlanders were picking it up.

Even Mirana.

"Where is she?"

"On her way."

"She's late."

"She's with Alice."

"So, should I be expecting her at all today?" Nivens snarked, looking at his pocket-watch frantically.

"She'll be here soon."

"I'm sure."

Twenty minutes later the White Queen floated in. "I'm so sorry I'm late. Alice had to show me something in the gardens."

Nivens scowled.


	15. Oppression

The Red Queen was not a ruler but a tyrant. She ruled Underland through fear and blood. Her people feared and loathed her, many of those brave enough to stand against her were horrifically killed, their bodies publically displayed either on the battlements or in the courtyard, others left to rot in the moat.

Absolutely no one was happy with her rule – not her subjects (who were alternately mistreated and killed), her courtiers (who lived in fear and humiliation) and even Iracebeth herself was unhappy (there weren't enough heads, enough people resisting her rule).

She needed someone else to kill. And this time she needed a reason.


	16. Perilous

Once upon a time, not too long ago, Underland had been a beautiful and prosperous place. People were happy and well-fed, the talking flowers tall and verbose, creatures roaming the land freely – as long as they meant no harm. Sometimes there were skirmishes at the border, but what country doesn't?

Then the Red Queen took control.

The Jabberwocky roamed freely, and the Bandersnatch was twisted until it lost its way. The flowers turned bitter and scornful, like shrews. The lush greenery shrivelled up and died, leaving the land barren and bare, dusty plains all that was left after her attacks. Many of those plains contained the ashes of the dead.

Underland was not a haven anymore.


	17. Queen

The crown had predominantly passed to the female line in Underland. They'd had Kings of course, mainly King Consorts, but some Queen's didn't have daughters, only sons, and some didn't have children at all.

Most did - what with the ability to have children eased by the wide range of solutions and remedies offered, particularly when in comparison to the primitive medicine of the Uplanders.

The tradition of passing the crown on to the eldest daughter (or the one best suited to ruling) had been started over four hundred years ago by an elderly King who's name had not survived. The King had handed the crown over to his daughter, in spite of his five sons and two brothers.

Ever since the female line had become Queen.


	18. Red

Red was Iracebeth's favourite colour. As a child she'd been fondly nicknamed the Queen of Hearts, popular and adored until she'd turned eight and perfect baby Mirana had come along.

Then Iracebeth had been regulated to jealous older sister. Her sister had been in line for the crown - _she_ was far more suited for it. Iracebeth wasn't going to be Queen anymore.

But she was still the Queen of Hearts - she would live up to that - and never forget it.

Her dresses were embroidered with hearts with matching red shoes, with red lipstick and red hats. Her interior decorating was all done in red and _everything_ important in her life was, in shades of crimson and scarlet, red.

Everything unimportant was red as well.

Even blood.


	19. Stone

The Jabberwocky had been slain in the ruins of the old palace, left standing for hundreds of years, before the time of Mirana's ancestors, before many of their own traditions had even been imagined.

Back then it had been rather traditional # women were rarely crowned, and were rarely serious healers or fights. Men were often in the employment of the Royal Household and every Mai a Maifair was held, with all manner of feasts and rituals, very few surviving to today.

Almost none of that was left. The people had died, Kings and Queens long forgotten. Fashions had changed, medicine, food. Houses had been knocked down, entire cities rebuilt.

All that was left standing was the palace made of stone.


	20. Tarrant

Madness is like a raven and a writing desk. There is no mundane to madness - only maniacal, morose, macabre.

He was all these things on an hourly basis.

Madness was like a never ending, never ticking clock. He hated Nivens saying he was late - because Time hated him and he was never late for anything. He was never on Time either.

He simply was.

And it stayed that way for fifteen years, until Alice knocked him out of it - quite literally. He'd retaliated by knocking her around via his hat.

It was a shame. He quite liked his hat.

But the maliciousness of the Red Queen would wait for no one.

Not even the mad.


	21. Underland

Underland hadn't changed very much over time - with the exception of the change in the monarchy. Not like Upland changed. The flowers had always talked (even if the gossiping was new), there had always been a wide variety of odd creatures, and an even odder variety of people.

The Hightopp Clan had always had orange hair and a Scottish accent.

The rulers were almost always benevolent.

Absolom had always been aggravating - and that never changed, despite everyone's attempts to subtly, and not-so subtly, change that.

Underland, in essence rarely changed, even if fickle things like fashions and food did.

They like it.


	22. Vain

For a long time she'd been normal.

It hadn't been until she was a teenager when she'd begun having migraines, powerful ones that paralysed her for hours on end, trapped in the darkness of her shut, her curtains tightly closed and a pillow over her eyes.

Over the course of the next two years year head had slowly begun to grow, until it was double the size and then again until it was tripled. She didn't really notice - not until she looked at a photo of her before, aged about ten. That was the first time she'd realised.

There was nothing she could do about that. Instead she wore layers of lipstick and eye shadow to cover it up.

Maybe they would notice that instead.


	23. Weird

Hamish Ascot, soon to be Lord Ascot, had had the benefit of leading a privileged life and education. This had led to an expansive vocabulary in which to describe the Kingsleigh family - and he would undoubtedly need it.

Charles Kingsleigh was intuitive, business minded, ahead of his time. He was undeniably odd but incorporated this into a successful business.

Lady Kingsleigh was proper, and very much so. She stuck rigidly to tradition in a way that reminded Hamish of his mother. Her eldest daughter Margaret seemed to follow in her footsteps, a dutiful young woman and wife. Lowell seemed like an honourable fellow but sometimes there was a sly look in his eyes, one that Hamish didn't trust.

And Alice, for all his vocabulary, was - there was no other word for it - weird.


	24. Xylophilous

Underland was a place that appreciated natural beauty, as much as one could in a place where flowers could talk and throw tantrums if rearranged so they were colour coordinating. Alice rather enjoyed the nature side to Underland, even if she couldn't understand why they made their homes out of wood - the trees could talk. Why would they build their houses out of them?  
It was in her second year in Underland that she found out, finally questioning Tarrant. It was tradition, he'd said. The trees, when they died, rather than burn, wished to be used to shelter others, as people took cover in the shadows of the woods.  
Trees wanted to help Underlanders, knowing that they were the best for this kind of job.  
Alice had never known that trees could be selfless before.


	25. Youth

**(I'm not quite sure where the last one came from, I just googled words beginning with X) xx**

She couldn't really remember the first time she'd gone to Underland. The memories were fuzzy and blurred, like something from a dream - and half the time she couldn't work out whether it was a dream or a memory. It hadn't helped at all the second time she'd gone to Underland, all the new things mixing with the old memories and the half dreams muddled by the night.

She could see herself, at six years old, falling down the rabbit hole like it would never end and screaming as though it was the most exciting ride of her life.

Then she'd open her eyes again and she'd be nine, twelve, sixteen again and it would all be just a dream.


	26. Zeal

The resistance against the Red Queen had, for a long time, been very small. Almost no one wanted to join for the price its members would pay - any of those that defied the Red Queen paid the price with their heads, never mind those that publically rebelled against her.

But those that fought, fought feverishly until some people almost believed they could win through sheer stubbornness and determination. Underland's people watched the rebels fight and silently cheered them on from the sidelines, too afraid to publically make a stand against their tyrant.

But the rebels never stopped fighting in hope.


End file.
